1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a liquid crystal display.
2. Discussion of the Background
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one type of the widely used flat panel displays (FPDs). The LCD is composed of two display panels on which field generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode are formed, and a liquid crystal layer is disposed between the two display panels. In the liquid crystal display, voltages are applied to the field generating electrodes to generate an electric field over the liquid crystal layer, which determines the alignment of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer. Accordingly, the polarization of incident light is controlled, thereby performing image display.
A vertical alignment mode LCD, which arranges major axes of liquid crystal molecules perpendicular to the display panel in a state in which the electric field is not applied, has been developed.
In the VA mode LCD, the important issue of a wide viewing angle can be realized by forming cutouts such as minute slits in the field-generating electrodes and protrusions on the field-generating electrodes. Since the cutouts and protrusions can determine the tilt directions of the liquid crystal molecules, the tilt directions can be distributed into various directions by using the cutouts and protrusions such that the reference viewing angle is widened.
Also, a method for providing a pretilt to the liquid crystal molecules in the absence of an electric field has been developed to improve the response speed of the liquid crystal while realizing the wide viewing angle. For the liquid crystal molecules to have the pretilt in various directions, alignment layers having various alignment directions may be used, or the liquid crystal layer is applied with an electric field and a thermal or light-hardened material is added, and light may be irradiated to slope the liquid crystal molecules in predetermined directions.
On the other hand, the VA mode liquid crystal display has lower side visibility compared with front visibility, such that one pixel is divided into two subpixels and different voltages are applied to the subpixels to solve this problem.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form part of the prior art.